


although the wind

by green_tea31



Series: Cairo Day 2020 [2]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cairo Day 2020 (MacGyver TV 2016), Can be read as gen, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Possibly Pre-Slash, nothing too graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23666398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_tea31/pseuds/green_tea31
Summary: The kid is thirsty. Even through the grainy camera feed, Jack can see it in the way he bites his lip, fingers gripping the armrests of the single chair in the interrogation room. He’s shivering too, stripped to his underwear. Henderson told them MacGyver was responsible for some pretty sensitive intel falling into the wrong hands, but no matter how he looks at it, Jack can’t quite…see it.In a world where Jack Dalton doesn't quit the CIA in time to become Mac's Overwatch, Mac and Jack meet under the darkest of circumstances. Years later, Jack finally gets the chance to make up for his mistakes and, just maybe, the chance for a brighter future.
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Series: Cairo Day 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701022
Comments: 33
Kudos: 97





	although the wind

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, I'm sorry in advance because this hurt while I was writing it, and it hurt again every time I read through it after. Well - it's the prompt of the day I guess? This is definitely one of those fics I didn't know I was writing until I was halfway through, but it's also a favourite of mine among all the fics I've written lately. It's very much a character study of Jack, and a character study of Mac through Jack's eyes. Every now and again I like exploring the darker side of our favourite characters and this might be one of the darkest things I've written yet regarding Jack, but don't worry, there's hope in there, and a happy ending. 
> 
> It was supposed to be macdalton when I first started writing, but I realized early on that it would shift the focus away from where I wanted it to be. I've tagged this as possibly pre-slash, because if I were to continue that's probably where it would end up somewhere down the road.
> 
> As always, self-betaed. All mistakes are my own.
> 
> Title from "Although the wind" by Izumi Shikibu.

> _Although the wind_
> 
> _blows terribly here,_
> 
> _the moonlight also leaks_
> 
> _between the roof planks_
> 
> _of this ruined house._
> 
> _by Izumi Shikibu, translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani_

The kid is thirsty. Even through the grainy camera feed, Jack can see it in the way he bites his lip, fingers gripping the armrests of the single chair in the interrogation room. He’s shivering too, stripped to his underwear. Henderson told them MacGyver was responsible for some pretty sensitive intel falling into the wrong hands, but no matter how he looks at it, Jack can’t quite…see it.

He’s been doing this job for a while, knows that evil wears an innocent face more often than not, but…

“Hey, man. We’re ready for the next round. Just need your go-ahead,” Griggs says, walking into the room where Jack’s been brooding for the past hour. He can’t stand the guy, smug little bastard that he is. Griggs likes this part of the job way too much for Jack’s peace of mind. Unfortunately he’s also very good at it. Jack glances up at him, nodding tightly. There’s an anticipatory grin on the other man’s face. Jack looks at the slowly moving hand of the single clock in the room. _Tick, tick, tick_ he’s counting the seconds, agonizing minute after minute, but loses count when the door to the interrogation room falls shut with an audible bang. 

Jack should have quit this job a long time ago.

It goes on for days. Jack keeps ignoring the uneasy feeling in his stomach, sleeping less and less, haunted blue eyes following him into his dreams. He’s disgustingly happy that MacGyver doesn’t scream – not yet. There’s a playbook to this kind of interrogation, and they’re still in the less…physical stages. Jack himself is really just here to oversee Griggs, to make sure everything goes according to the rules. He’s done his share of interrogations in the field, in dark corners of even darker places, and those still haunt him to this day. He can’t even imagine how Griggs does this as systematically as he does without putting a bullet in his head at the end of the day.

Jack’s job, at least in this stage, is to be the good cop, to give the kid an alternative. After a few days, Jack steps into MacGyver’s cell and sits down on the only chair in the room. MacGyver is curled up on the stained mattress in the corner, threadbare blanket pulled over his legs.

That blanket will be gone by morning. Griggs had been especially happy, detailing that part over breakfast.

“Hey. Angus right?” The kid flinches, the movement barely there, but Jack’s been trained to notice things like that. “Don’t like your first name much, huh?” MacGyver grips the blanket tighter and looks at the floor.

“All you need to do is give us the name of your contact and all this is gonna end, kid,” Jack says. The first few days he hadn’t been able to stay silent, told them over and over again that he had no idea what they were talking about, that they had the wrong man, the wrong soldier – that someone must have set him up.

Jack sits in that cell for the next two hours trying to get him to talk. MacGyver stays silent.

…

“There’s an art to it, you know,” Griggs says, grinning, leaning back against the lumpy old couch in the room where they generally conduct their morning briefings. Byrne, their freckle-faced technician who really isn’t that much older than MacGyver, looks away in disgust.

Yeah, he’d probably had some heroic dream about serving his country when he’d applied for this job. Welcome to reality buddy.

“You stop the water too early, they don’t feel too threatened, takes too long that way, but if you take too long,” he shrugs before continuing, “the water gets in the lungs and you risk losing them to pneumonia.”

Jack puts down the sandwich he’s been half-heartedly nibbling on for the past half hour. He’d seen the kid that morning, still drenched in ice cold water, eyes blinking while the music kept him awake in his cell.

The memory makes him nauseous.

His cell phone rings and Jack is more than glad for the interruption. He’s spent way too much time lately trying to think of ways to get rid of Griggs without Langley getting suspicious. He takes the call. It’s Dan Henderson, their contact back to Langley.

“Dalton – put me on speaker.” Jack does. “As of right now you’re ordered to stop the interrogation immediately. A team should arrive in the next thirty minutes to take him off your hands. Make sure he’s comfortable until then.”

Jack’s blood freezes to ice in his veins. “What the hell?”

“You heard me,” Dan continues and even through the phone Jack can hear the uncertainty in his voice. “Jack – there’s evidence he’s innocent.”

Griggs raises an eyebrow, but the news don’t seem to disturb him much. Byrne’s face turns green at those words and he bolts out of the room. Judging by the sounds he’s busy losing his breakfast over the kitchen sink. Jack only barely manages not to follow him. He wants to say more, wants to yell at Dan, but the other man has already hung up.

Griggs cocks his head and grins. “Huh – didn’t see that one coming.”

… 

“Come on Dalton. We both know you never liked this part of the job anyway.”

Jack brushes a hand over his head, skin sticky with sweat in the cramped office and tries not to let the claustrophobic feeling get to him.

He can’t get the sight of haunted blue eyes in a too young face out of his mind.

_Innocent blue eyes._

And here he thought he couldn’t hate himself even more than he already does.

“Yeah, well. Maybe it’s time I quit the job if this is the kind of shoddy intel I have to work with. You told me the kid was in league with some really bad people Dan, and I believed you. What the hell went wrong, huh? Who the hell screwed this up?”

The other man leans back in his chair and sighs heavily. “I don’t know – _yet_. But I promise you we’re gonna find out.” It’s an empty promise and they both know it.

“And MacGyver?” Jack asks, not sure he really wants to know the answer.

Dan huffs. “Needless to say he took the option of immediate discharge. Honourable, in case you’re interested. I doubt he’s ever going to want to have anything to do with the US government ever again.”

“Can you blame him?” Jack asks and takes a closer look at their handler. “What else?”

“Why do you think there’s anything else?”

Jack raises an eyebrow. “I’ve known you for how long again? You’re worried about something – something about MacGyver.”

Dan sighs heavily. “Alright. There’s been some…chatter.”

“Chatter?”

“Yeah. About MacGyver. Someone’s making inquiries – not very _polite_ inquiries.” He grimaces, looking up at Jack. “Someone with influence – considerable influence from what I gathered, is pretty pissed off about the whole thing.”

“You worried about your job?”

Dan chuckles wryly. “My job? Jack – if what I heard is even a little bit true I’m worried about someone putting a fucking bullet in my head.”

…

Dan doesn’t catch a bullet, and Jack resigns with a strongly worded letter that no one important in Langley will ever read. The MacGyver case isn’t the Agency’s first screw up, and it won’t be their last. It will be buried somewhere deep within the nightmare that is the CIA’s filing system, and soon no one will even remember it happened.

Griggs gets a slap on the wrist for being a little _too_ enthusiastic – Jack’s report had some impact it seems – and a transfer to Europe. Jack drifts. He tries to keep track of MacGyver at first, burning through favours and contacts at an alarming rate, not sure of his motivation. Maybe it’s the guilt that’s been sitting heavy in his gut. He’s got a lot of regrets, but none of those haunt him like this case does. He still sees haunted blue eyes when he closes his own, feels like every stranger with a head of dishevelled blond hair could be the one he remembers so vividly. 

MacGyver goes back to college, finishes his degree. Jack loses track of him then, but thinks the kid will be all right, at least from the outside. He’s been on the other side of enhanced interrogation before, and knows that some scars never fade. In his darker moments Jack wonders what would have happened to MacGyver if he’d never run afoul of the Agency in the first place. He’d taken a look at the kid’s file in the aftermath. Turned out his superiors considered MacGyver the best EOD tech to come out of training in years – described him as creative, resourceful, and with nerves of steel. He would have been prime material for recruitment by one of the many government agencies after the regular end of his service.

In his darkest moments Jack asks himself how many American soldiers lost their lives because MacGyver took the option of honourable discharge, and wasn’t there to be creative and resourceful anymore – asks himself if those death are on his conscience now.

On those nights, he sits in his living room, staring into the dark, and tries not to think about the loaded gun in the drawer of his bedside table.

Surprisingly, it’s his old boss from his CIA days who drags him back into the land of the living kicking and screaming. When Jack quit, he’d sent a short message, and then ignored her attempts to get in contact. He thought she’d finally given up after a year of silence, but it’s her scowling face that greets him after he opens his apartment door on a sunny Friday morning.

“Dalton – you look like shit.” She lets her eyes wander over his frankly pathetic appearance before brushing him aside to walk into his living room.

“What?” Jack is pretty sure this is some kind of psychotic break.

Matty shakes her head. “Did you really think you could get rid of me that easily?”

Jack closes the door and wanders over into the kitchen. He’s pretty sure he made coffee a few hours ago and didn’t drink all of it. He doesn’t bother with a mug, drinking directly from the pot. Matty looks disgusted.

“Are you listening to me, Jack?”

“Do I have a choice?” Jack asks in return, wincing at how rough his voice sounds. It’s entirely possible he hasn’t had actual human contact in weeks.

“No,” Matty says. She sits down gingerly on the couch, in the only spot that isn’t covered in clothes.

“I still don’t know what happened on your last op-“ Jack tries to interrupt, but a look from her stops him. “Though I can guess given the…nature of your assignment.” Matty had often tried to keep Langley from giving him those kind of jobs, but sometimes his previous training and experience meant that she didn’t get a say. Jack had always appreciated her determination to protect him, even as he wondered whether or not it even mattered anymore, given what he’d already done in the name of Uncle Sam.

“I’m here to offer you a job.”

“Matty-,” Jack begins cautiously because there’s no way he’s going back to that kind of work.

“Hear me out Jack. I left the Agency not long after you did. A month ago I was offered the position of director of a clandestine agency right here in LA. The cover is think tank, and they’ve been set up to work…let’s call it a different angle.”

“Different angle?” Jack asks. He’s pretty sure he knows what she’s getting at, but right now it all sounds a bit too good to be true.

“We try to go in before it’s too late. More troubleshooting, less…manipulation after the fact – less questionable methods as well.” And Jack knows that Matty knows that that’s exactly the thing she needs to say to get him to agree. The truth is, he’d been waiting for a way back in. Jack hates the questionable choices he’s had to make during his career, but the more benign aspects of the job – the fast-paced, adrenaline-filled life he’d lived? That he misses. He’s not quite at the point where retirement is an option that doesn’t involve a single bullet with his name on it.

He takes the job. 

…

“Good fight, Dalton,” Desi says, before throwing him a towel and sauntering away towards the showers. Jack grunts in response and hopes it doesn’t sound too painful. He’s good, but so is Desi, and while they’d be pretty evenly matched in a real fight, this is sparring and they’re trying to avoid causing any lasting damage, which means that more often than not, Jack ends up with a lot of bruises afterwards. He’s kind of lost count of how many martial arts his partner knows at this point.

He takes a quick shower and is only a few minutes late to the briefing. How Desi manages to always be ahead of him, he’ll probably never find out. Matty glares at Jack, but Russ ignores him, as always. Jack doesn’t _not_ like Russ Taylor, but since day one there’s been a tension between them that’s entirely due to the fact that they’re too similar too each other, yet worlds apart in their outlook on life. Like Jack, Russ seems to view his job as some kind of redemption for the sins he committed in his past, but unlike Jack, he’s never left behind the _mindset_ necessary for doing what they did.

It doesn’t help that they both have a very similar sense of humour, but where Jack always tries to lighten the mood, there’s a kind of callousness to some of Russ’ interactions with the rest of the team that grates on Jack’s nerves. In return, Jack is one of the very few people that Mr Psy Ops can’t read like an open book, because he’s got decades of experience pretending to be someone he isn’t. Russ Taylor is an expert at seeing through people’s bullshit; Jack was trained to misdirect people like Taylor. Needless to say, most of their interactions are…interesting. 

“Dalton. Nice of you to join us,” Matty says. Russ opens a file on the screen, and Jack finds himself thrown headfirst back into his past, dropped into a dilapidated warehouse, innocent blue eyes looking up at him from a dirty mattress.

“This is David Byrne, one of our analysts and technicians,” Riley says, and the hitch in her voice as she says his name tells Jack that she knows him personally, and that he’s very likely dead.

How the hell did he miss the fact that Byrne was working for the goddamn DXS?

“Byrne was killed two days ago in what looked like an attempted robbery on a gas station,” Matty continues. “However, roughly three hours later, surveillance cameras picked up this man at LAX.” She opens another file and Jack stares into the eyes of a man that could politely be called “muscled”.

“Jonah Walsh,” Russ takes over. “The man has been wreaking havoc across the world since he went rogue a few years ago.” He looks at Matty, a question in his eyes that Jack can’t understand.

Matty nods tiredly and continues. “The DXS was originally the brainchild of a high ranking government operative and his partner,” she says and nods at Walsh’s picture. “He was the partner. As for the operative – James MacGyver was a colleague of mine, and a friend.” She opens another picture and Jack’s heart freezes. He doesn’t know the man – but he _does_ know those eyes.

_Please no._

“Walsh went rogue and took a significant amount of sensitive intel with him, enough to compromise more than a dozen operatives and countless ops. Unfortunately, he managed to fake his death and frame James MacGyver for the leak. James went dark, but…”

Yeah, Jack knows what follows, and hasn’t he been quietly waiting for his sins to catch up with him? It’s only fair that it’s going to be this op that finally cracks him wide open and shows the world what kind of monster he really is. 

“His son, Angus MacGyver,” Russ continues, and suddenly Jack finds himself staring at a face that’s been haunting his nightmares for years. “Walsh implicated him as well. At that time, the boy had no idea what his father even did for a living – but since MacGyver senior managed to shake the authorities, the CIA…extracted the son for questioning.”

“Do you mean…?” Riley asks hesitantly.

“Torture, Riley. They tortured an innocent man because somewhere someone fucked up their job,” Jack says roughly. Matty throws him a _look_ , and if she hasn’t figured it out yet, she will soon enough. The timing is just too convenient.

“So we think Walsh killed Byrne?” Jack asks because he doesn’t quite see the connection there.

Matty nods. “Yes. I had a contact in Langley send me Byrne’s file from his days at the CIA. Turns out he was involved in interrogating Angus MacGyver.”

“And where’s the connection?” Desi has been quiet throughout the briefing so far, but she’s leaning forward in her seat with interest now. “I mean – why does Walsh care about who tortured the son of the partner he betrayed?”

“James MacGyver never officially resurfaced. He’s made contact a few times, but he never really returned,” Matty says. “What’s more – a few years ago Angus MacGyver vanished as well. He finished his degree at MIT, and was supposed to start a prestigious job at a tech company, but he never actually showed up. The only thing I received was this.” She throws another picture onto the screen, a handwritten note penned in precise, sharped-edged letters.

_He’s with me._

“James’ handwriting,” Matty continues. “As for why Walsh cares. Over the years, some of his operations have blown up in a more than spectacular fashion, and two weeks ago, someone handed over one of his closest confidants to the authorities.”

“You think James was responsible for those blow ups – and for the arrest,” Riley says, more of a statement than a question.

Russ nods. “We think Walsh is trying to smoke out James and his son. He goes after the people involved in the interrogation, and gets James’ attention. Since that list is likely very limited, he’ll know where they’re going to be.” Jack wants to ask why James and his son would even care about the people who hurt the younger MacGyver, but the answer is probably that both of them are better people than Jack could ever hope to be.

“Alright, people. Listen up! We don’t have the complete list of people involved in the interrogation yet, but Byrne’s direct supervisor at the time was Dan Henderson. He’s since retired and moved to a little farm in Scotland of all places. He’s been warned, and it’s our job to extract him as soon as possible,” Matty says. “I will stay here, and start on hunting down the rest of Henderson’s team. Jack, Desi, you’re taking point on this. Russ will back you up.”

“What are we going to do if we run into one of the MacGyvers?” Desi asks.

Matty looks conflicted. “Just…tell James I’m sorry. As for his son…,” she trails off and shakes her head. “I don’t know. Be gentle, I guess. Well – as gentle as you can be.” Matty looks at Desi knowingly, because Jack’s partner is a lot of things, but gentle is really not one of them.

The team leaves and Jack stays behind, because this is it. They’re going to find out anyway. It’s better if it comes from him directly. He shakes his head and mouths a silent later at Desi when she throws him a questioning look.

“Jack?” Matty asks when they’re alone, except for Russ. Jack would prefer to do this without him, but apparently that’s not in the cards. Fine. He can do this.

Probably.

Jack takes a deep breath. “You can add a name to that list of yours. Mine.”

Matty closes her eyes, nodding to herself. When she looks at Jack again, her eyes are anguished. Jack’s not sure he deserves that much.

“I feared that was the case. The timing…”

Jack swallows. “Yeah. You’re not one to miss the obvious when it’s staring you right in the face.”

Matty steps closer, and puts a hand over his. Jack hadn’t even noticed that he’s been clenching the leather of his seat between his fingers.

“You decide how to tell the team, Jack. And you _do_ need to tell them yourself.”

Jack nods. She’s right. Desi might forgive him if he doesn’t, but Riley…

For all her experience with prison, and working for the DXS, there’s still something inherently innocent in his pseudo daughter. Riley never worked for the shadier parts of the government, and for all their missions gone wrong, they mostly avoided the kind of fuck ups where agents return after days, weeks, or sometimes months of captivity, jumping at every noise and shadow.

“Yeah – I know.” Matty squeezes his hand in sympathy, throwing a pointed glance at Russ before leaving. Russ ignores her and stays behind anyway, clearing his throat when Jack refuses to look up at him.

“Wanna throw your two cents in, too?” Jack asks, decidedly not looking forward to whatever the other man has to say.

Russ sighs and sits down. “I know you don’t really like me Jack, but let me tell you this – I’ve always admired your courage.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You and I are very similar, but you’ve managed something I haven’t. You looked at your life and your choices and said _no more, this is where I draw the line,_ and then you walked away without looking back.”

Jack blinks confused. “Pretty sure you did the same thing.”

Russ laughs. It’s a hollow thing. “No Jack. I went on blindly until the train was about to crash, and then I came to you and your team and begged you to help me fix my mistakes. So, no matter what’s going through your head right now, in that regard, you’re a far better man than I am.” Jack thinks back on Russ’ first op with them. He’d offered to keep them afloat and funded after Oversight, legendary intelligence operative Patricia Thornton, turned out to be a traitor, and in turn Matty and the team had helped him fix what Russ’ company had broken in the first place.

“Think about that when you’re about to drown in self-hate,” Russ adds before leaving.

Alright, maybe Russ Taylor isn’t so bad after all.

… 

“But – I mean. What exactly _did_ you do?” Riley asks after Jack finishes explaining why he’s a potential target of Walsh’s as well. He recognizes what she’s trying to do. It’s a common response of people close to men and women who have done terrible things, confronted with their loved ones true faces for the first time. Jack’s seen it in relatives of people he’d been sent to take out, and it breaks his heart to see it in Riley now.

She’s trying to reconcile the Jack she knows with the person he has been – maybe deep down still is. How much change can there really be, to a man like him? Does one good deed erase the darkness that’s always just one step behind? If someone threatened Riley, would Jack be able to keep the monster in check?

Riley wants him to tell her that he wasn’t really involved, that maybe he can justify his part in Angus MacGyver’s ~~interrogation~~ torture somehow, but that’s the one thing he can’t give her.

Even if the kid had been guilty, there are some moral choices Jack is glad he doesn’t have to make anymore.

Some choices he never should have made to begin with.

“That doesn’t really matter, Riley. I was there – I looked into Angus MacGyver’s eyes while he was freezing in a tiny cell, bein’ kept awake by music loud enough to wake the dead, and I kept him there. There’s no excusing it, darlin’. I’m as much responsible for what happened to him as the people who fucked up the intel, or the man who broke his fingers when he wouldn’t talk.” Riley nods, but it’s clear she’s trying very hard not to cry. Jack squeezes her hand.

“Just – think about that. ‘Bout whether or not you can still work with me,” Jack braces himself for what he’s about to say next, and it’s the hardest thing he’s ever said to her. “Still want me to be involved in your life.” He squeezes her hand again and retreats into the back of the plane where Desi and Russ have sequestered themselves in an attempt to give them privacy.

Jack sits down next to Desi and closes his eyes. It’s going to be a long flight. 

…

Dan has taken shelter in an MI5 safe house in Edinburgh. He looks at Jack knowingly once the introductions are done, which doesn’t surprise him because he’d taken the brunt of Jack’s ire after the op and before his resignation. What does surprise Jack is that Dan had apparently kept track of MacGyver for a time as well.

“I couldn’t get the op out of my head. I know a few supervising agents who’ve had interrogees turn out innocent before, but you never expect that sort of thing will happen to you until it does.” He shrugs. “In the end, that’s what got me to resign. I’d been doing that job for a long time, but after MacGyver, the uncertainty started to get to me – always asking if this one’s innocent, too, or maybe it’s the next one. So I handed in my resignation and moved on.”

It’s a far more pragmatic outlook than Jack has, but he’s the last man to judge how someone deals with their sins.

He’s about to tell Riley to step away from the window when the glass shatters, and Dan drops backwards with a hole between his eyes.

“Sniper!” Jack throws himself at Riley, managing to get them behind the back of the couch. It’s a pitiful cover, and whoever is shooting at them likely knows it too. The door is thrown open, and Desi ducks into the room, gun trained on the window.

“Go! I’ll cover you,” she yells and returns fire, giving them the few precious seconds they need to leave, Desi behind them. The stairway is dark and claustrophobically tight. Jack runs, and prays there’s no one waiting for them at the end of this bottleneck. They make it to the car in the alley behind the house without running into the enemy. Russ pulls up in their rental car, but they’re still taking fire. Jack, Desi, and Riley take cover behind a dumpster, but it’s not going to be long until they’re going to be overrun.

“I’m out of ammo,” Desi yells, frustrated. Jack takes over providing cover and nods at the car.

“Go – there’s backup in the car.” He starts shooting and breathes easier once Desi and Riley make it safely to the car. Desi reloads and Jack starts running towards the car as well, when a sudden, sharp pain in his lower back makes him stumble and drop to his knees.

“Jack!” Riley’s voice is barely audible over the hail of gunfire. A second bullet hits Jack’s shoulder, and he has just enough time to think that this is going to hurt when he wakes up – if he wakes up – before darkness takes him.

…

Jack wakes up, which surprises him. He’d really thought this was it – that this time, there’d be no last minute miracle rescue. He’s also not in that much pain, which surprises him as well, until he notices the familiar drowsiness of heavy duty painkillers buzzing at the back of his head. He tries to sit up and fails spectacularly.

“Easy there. You lost a lot of blood.” Jack manages to turn his head, looking right into familiar blue eyes. Angus MacGyver is sitting on a chair next to his bed, wearing jeans and a fisherman’s sweater that makes him look like he’s escaped from a romantic hallmark movie.

“What?” Jack croaks out, voice hoarse. MacGyver hands him an unopened bottle of water, helping Jack when his hands are still too weak to open the bottle himself.

“Thanks,” Jack says after he’s finished drinking. The kid puts the bottle on the nightstand next to the bed and leans back in his chair.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t save Henderson,” MacGyver says, ignoring Jack’s confused frown. “I-,” he tries to continue, but Jack interrupts him.

“Why the hell are you apologizing to me?” He asks, because if there’s one thing Angus MacGyver doesn’t need to do, it’s to apologize to Jack for _anything_.

“Because we weren’t early enough to keep Jonah from killing Dan Henderson?”

“Oh for…that’s not-“ Jack tries to sit up, struggling with his sluggish limbs refusing to cooperate. MacGyver helps him until he can lean back against a veritable mountain of pillows.

“MacGyver – _Angus_.” The other man flinches. Dammit, he’d almost forgotten about that. “Sorry kid. I’m still not clear on why the hell you bothered to save me in the first place? After what I did to you, you shoulda just left me to die in that alley.”

MacGyver’s eyes narrow. “You were doing your job, weren’t you? Don’t tell me you _regret_ it.” His words are designed to confront, to provoke Jack into some kind of emotional reaction whether he’s doing it consciously or not.

“I was doing my job, yeah. Doesn’t mean it was right, what happened to you. _God_ – I’m so sorry. It should _never_ have happened.”

The other man takes a deep breath and rubs a hand over his face. “I’d rather not talk about it right now. Let’s just…I still need to tell you what happened after you were shot, and then we need to find Jonah and Griggs.”

“Wait – what? Griggs is in Scotland too?” Jack has so far avoided thinking of the fact that he’s about to meet the other man again, though he’s been solely tempted to just hand over Griggs to Walsh himself and clean up the mess afterwards.

MacGyver chuckles roughly. “Griggs is working _with_ Jonah. He’s the one who found me after I finished MIT. My dad nearly put a bullet in him, but he escaped.”

Jack can’t say he saw this coming, but he can definitely see Griggs go down that road. As long as he can apply his skills, he’s probably happy to work for whoever guarantees him the biggest paycheck. Griggs had a few distinct character traits – a well-developed sense of duty and doing the right thing hadn’t been one of them.

“What about my team?” Jack asks the question he’s wanted to ask since waking up, but fears the answer to the most.

MacGyver smiles reassuringly. “They’re fine. One of your colleagues, Ms Davis?” Jack nods. “She tried to get back to you, but was held back from what I could see. And whoever was driving that car floored it as soon as the guy with the rocket launcher appeared on the roof.”

Jack closes his eyes and breathes in relief. Thank god and Russ Taylor for prioritizing Riley and Desi’s lives over Jack’s.

“My dad made contact with your boss. We’re pretty sure Walsh is going to stay in Scotland as long as we’re still here. Once you’re recovered, we can start on hunting them down.”

“Once I’m – kid I’m pretty sure I was shot twice. You really think they’re gonna wait that long?”

MacGyver grins. “Actually, you were pretty lucky. Both shots were grazes. Going to hurt like a bitch, but a week or two and you should be somewhat ready to help us out.”

Jack nods. It’s not ideal, but he’s put his body through worse over the years. Medical is probably going to yell at him, but they always do, and Jack is used to it by now. MacGyver gets up and shoots him a considering look.

“Name’s Mac by the way. So you can stop calling me kid.” He smiles and leaves Jack to his thoughts, feeling oddly like he’s successfully passed some kind of test he wasn’t aware of taking in the first place. 

…

Mac is right. Once the painkillers wear off, pretty much everything starts to hurt. Jack was expecting it to be honest, he’s been shot before – this isn’t his first rodeo.

His interactions with the kid are…awkward. Mac is skittish around him, something to be expected, except for those times when he starts telling Jack about some random kind of information that’s caught his interest – like the history of the castle ruins close to their hideout – then he starts getting a particular glint in his eyes, seemingly forgets what Jack has done to him.

Jack finds that he actually, genuinely _likes_ Mac. Likes the way he can ramble about the strangest facts for hours, likes the way his eyes light up whenever Jack shows even the slightest amount of interest in what he has to say.

They’re not alone in the house which Jack finds out the first time he’s finally strong enough to venture into the kitchen. Mac went to the closest town in order to get some much needed supplies, so Jack assumes he has the house to himself, and doesn’t bother with making any kind of noise after leaving his room.

He’s greeted with a frying pan wielding maniac when he steps into the kitchen.

“What the hell, man. You’re not supposed to be up yet.” Jack raises an eyebrow. Injured or not, he doubts the guy poses much of a challenge judging by the way he’s holding that pan.

He motions at the other man’s hands. “You’re not going to knock me out for long, holding it like that. Might give me a headache for an hour or so, but you better have something more permanent stashed around here if you wanna take me out for good.”

The guy flushes and lowers his makeshift weapon. “Yeah – well. Mac doesn’t really like guns all that much. And you were supposed to be sleeping. Never would have come here if I knew there was a chance of running into you in the goddamn kitchen of all places,” he says, looking away. When his eyes turn back to Jack, there’s something ugly deep within. “Don’t know why they bothered with you in the first place.” Jack swallows, but the other man isn’t finished. “If you want something to drink, glasses are in the cabinet over the sink. Dinner isn’t ready yet, so you’re gonna have to wait if you’re hungry. Name’s Bozer by the way. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but I was there when Mac came back from Afghanistan or wherever the hell you kept him, so it’s really, really not.”

Jack nods and gets himself a glass of water. After the kid had all but ignored their past connection, it’s kind of a relief to find himself confronted with this kind of open disdain. He’s become an expert at self-loathing over the course of his career, but there’s never been anyone who actually called Jack out on it – who looked at Jack and saw a person capable of making their own choices. Matty can tell him she understands, that it’d been the CIA’s fault until she’s blue in the face. The truth is, he could have taken his concerns over the MacGyver assignment to someone above Dan’s paygrade, could have made noise until someone important listened.

Hell, even just putting a bullet in Griggs’ head and facing the consequences afterwards would have been the better choice by far. 

When Mac returns, Jack is sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of water in front of him. Bozer has managed to ignore him for the past hour while finishing whatever he’s cooking. 

“You know,” Mac says, addressing Jack. “You were shot a few days ago. Maybe you shouldn’t walk around just yet.” It’s more of a statement than a question, but Jack just shrugs in response.

“I’ve had worse. Managed to get out of Minsk once with an infected gunshot wound in my thigh. This is child’s play in comparison.”

Bozer snorts, not deigning to respond, but Mac smiles – it’s a real smile, not the tentative, skittish facsimile of one he’s been greeting Jack with every morning until know.

He wonders when he became comfortable enough around Mac to judge his emotional responses like that – wonders if he deserves to have that kind of knowledge.

“Yeah well. I spent a lot of time on those sutures – take care of them alright?” Jack nods and toasts him with his glass of water, allowing himself a moment to bask in the smile he receives in return. 

…

There’s a scar on Mac’s face, at the hinge of his jaw, just above a prominent birthmark. It goes up to his ear in a slight half-circle, standing out on his cheek against the pallor of his skin. Jack can’t stop looking at it. He remembers how the kid got it – remembers it vividly.

_Jack stares at the screen, fingers nervously tapping on the table in front of him. Griggs puts the cloth back over MacGyver’s face, water pouring until the kid starts inhaling the liquid with each desperate breath. Jack nearly stops Griggs, because they’re going to get nowhere if their captive develops pneumonia, but suddenly there’s a crash from the room, and Jack watches in horror as the chair MacGyver is tied to tips to the side until he lands on the ground with a painful grunt. Jack rushes into the cell. There’s blood all over the kid’s face – shards of glass spread over the floor. Whatever he landed on must have broken under the force of the fall. Griggs and Jack manage to get him upright again, and when it becomes clear that they won’t be able to continue with the interrogation that day, Griggs leaves him with the task of cleaning MacGyver up._

_He’s gentle, wiping away the blood from pale skin. There’s a birthmark just below the bleeding cut, and the kid flinches when Jack brushes over it with a wipe. MacGyver is shaking the whole way through, looking everywhere but at Jack. Jack’s hands are steady. He finishes cleaning him up and releases his hands and feet, guides MacGyver back to his cell and watches as he curls up in a dirty corner._

_Jack leaves the room, locks himself in their tiny bathroom, and throws up his lunch into the toilet._

…

Their confrontation, when it comes, surprises Jack, because he’s almost managed to convince himself that the kid is too stubborn to let himself be visibly affected by the presence of one of his former tormentors.

Jack wakes up and immediately looks at the clock in his room, because it’s still dark outside. He hasn’t been sleeping all that well, but whenever he’d woken up at night over the last few days, it’d been nightmares chasing him from sleep, and right know, there’s no heartbeat pounding in his ear, no ghosts in the corner of his eyes keeping him awake.

There’s a sudden shout from the room next to his, and Jack rolls out of bed without regard for his still healing injuries, resulting in him having to steady himself on a dresser for a few moments until the worst of the sudden pain has passed. He makes his way over to Mac’s room, and finds the kid caught in the throes of a particularly vicious nightmare from the looks of it. Jack is torn. On the one hand, he wants nothing more than to wake Mac up, to chase away the demons hunting him in his sleep. On the other hand, he’s fairly certain that at least one of those demons wears Jack’s face.

The decision is easy in the end. Jack’s caused the kid enough pain. He approaches Mac carefully, gently shakes his shoulder, and manages to catch the fist flying at his face thanks to his well-trained reflexes.

By the time Mac is fully awake, Jack has him pinned, one arm lightly over his throat, to keep the kid from trashing around and, by extension, trashing Jack as well.

There’s fear and panic in those blue eyes. Jack carefully releases him, sitting back on the bed.

He swallows. “I’m sorry. You were having a nightmare. I thought…”

Mac interrupts him. “Yeah – well. Next time just leave me the hell alone.” His voice sounds hoarse, and he rubs a hand over his face in frustration. “I can’t – I can’t deal with this.” He throws away the covers and gets up, ignoring Jack’s presence in order to get to the tiny ensuite bathroom.

Jack can hear the water from the sink running, and he should probably leave and get back to his own room, but…

But his presence in this house is apparently dredging up things the kid would rather forget, and if Jack can help him by being gone as soon as possible, they should probably call the team in the morning.

“You’re still here,” Mac says, stepping back into the bedroom. He’s cautious, edging along the way almost imperceptibly, but Jack’s been trained to know when someone tries to avoid getting closer to him.

“Why am I still here?” Jack asks, raising an eyebrow. Mac stops short and frowns, opening his mouth to say something, but Jack isn’t finished. “I get that you want my help to catch Griggs and Walsh, but I could have recuperated someplace else.” He narrows his eyes at the kid who is slightly hunched between a dresser and a potted plant that’s seen better days.

“I know you don’t wanna talk about this, but I’m thinking we really, really need to, ‘cause with each day I’m here your buddy Bozer looks closer to serving me up for dinner, and I’d kinda like to avoid being turned into meat pie.” It’s a weak attempt to diffuse the tension with humour, but for some reason it seems to work on Mac anyway. His shoulders lose that godawful tension, and he takes a step closer to where Jack’s still sitting on the bed.

“You’re probably right – _shit_!” Mac rubs a hand through his hair before grabbing a sweater to throw over his sweatpants and shirt combo. Jack is wearing a long sleeve with his sweats, so he’s slightly better off, but he begins to feel the chill in the air as well. The kid sits down next to Jack, enough space between them for at least two other people, but Jack will take what he can get.

Mac takes a deep breath before throwing a glance at Jack. “I wanted to – I don’t even really know. I was all set to hand you over to your people after you woke up, but then you – you _apologized_.” He looks at his hands and the disbelief in his voice nearly breaks Jack’s heart. “I didn’t think – you know, when Griggs found me again, he gloated about it. Asked me if I still screamed as _prettily_ as I had then.” Mac spits out those last words, tears threatening at the corner of his eyes. Jack wants to touch him, to put a hand on his shoulder and squeeze reassuringly, but he doesn’t really think the other man would welcome Jack trying to comfort him right now.

Mac looks at him like Jack is a wild animal who unexpectedly turned out to be as tame as a housecat under the right circumstances. “You were _kind_ , and I kept asking myself how that’s possible. You know, there was a time, right after I got back, when I kept waking up shaking, and the only thing I remembered from the nightmare was your voice?”

Jack can’t keep from reacting to that statement, can’t keep himself from flinching, because if there’s one thing he does well, it’s talking. Talking is his first defence mechanism – talking circles around people his best weapon to be underestimated.

And it’s been hurting Mac all along.

“Mac-“ he tries to interrupt, but the other man isn’t finished yet.

“You were almost worse than Griggs you know. At least with him, I knew to fear him, but you…you were kind – sometimes – and then like this immovable pillar of stone the next moment, and I could never predict what you’d do next.”

Jack’s heart clenches. It’s one thing blaming himself or facing Mac’s best friend, it’s another thing entirely to hear it laid out like this – from the very person he’d done it to in the first place.

“I guess I just wanted to know if I could ever get to the point where I hear your voice and don’t have the urge to curl up in a corner and scream.”

Jack looks at Mac, looks at the bewildered desperation in his eyes, and makes a decision he should have made days ago. “I’ll call my people in the morning. I’ll be gone by noon.” He expects the kid to accept – maybe nod in acknowledgement and let Jack leave in peace, but Mac surprises him – again – and grabs his arm just as he’s about to get up.

When Jack looks at him, there’s a different emotion written all over his face, something he can’t identify – not yet.

“It’s not your voice anymore,” Mac says, almost sounding bewildered himself.

“I’m sorry?”

“I – remember yesterday? When you told me about the first time you helped your dad to break in a horse.” Jack nods and swallows heavily, throat dry. It’s the first time either of them touched the other since _then_. Well, except for Mac stitching him up, but he doesn’t actually remember any of that.

“I liked listening to that. Your voice I mean. I liked hearing you tell that story – it was…soothing. The nightmare tonight, that wasn’t about you. It was Griggs, and the way he liked to…to _touch_ me sometimes before pouring water over my face, or breaking my fingers.” Jack’s heart almost stops when he mentions the fact that Griggs was apparently even more of a bastard than Jack thought, and he’s definitely coming back to that – even if it’s just when he finally confronts Griggs, because he will, Jack’s promised himself that much. Mac looks down at his hand, the one he isn’t using to clutch at Jack’s sleeve, and Jack almost doesn’t ask, knowing how important hands are to bomb techs and engineers alike, but he needs to know.

“Are they…can you still use them – the way you did before?”

The kid looks up at him, cocks his head, and holds out his hand. He makes a fist, bending his fingers one by one, starting with the pinky, and deliberately looking at Jack the whole time while he proves that his dexterity at least hadn’t suffered permanent damage.

Jack breathes in relief. He’d been wondering about that ever since reading the kid’s file. 

“And then I heard your voice,” Mac continues. “In the dream. I heard your voice and I followed it until I woke up and you were there – you were there and I knew that…that I was _safe_. So – I guess what I’m saying is, you can stay…if you want.”

Jack looks at Mac’s fingers clutched around his forearm, knuckles white, and closes his eyes. He doesn’t deserve this – doesn’t deserve to be anywhere close to this radiant young man who’s suffered so much in his comparatively short life. But it’s not his decision to make.

“Alright,” he manages to croak out. “Alright – I’ll stay.” The kid smiles and releases Jack’s arm. Jack leaves and crawls back into his bed. His hands are shaking when he switches the light off.

He doesn’t fall asleep again that night. 

…

Jack meets James MacGyver the next morning. He stumbles into the kitchen, sees the man sitting at the table, and stops cold.

“Good morning Agent Dalton,” James says, mustering Jack’s dishevelled appearance with a blank face. Mac is standing at the sink, coffee mug clutched between his fingers. He’s apparently recovered from last night, because he rolls his eyes at his father and smiles at Jack in greeting.

“Hey Jack. Meet my dad. He’s usually nicer to people, but, well.” He shrugs, unconcerned, and Jack resolves to keep a very close eye on the older MacGyver. Mac may have decided that Jack’s not quite the monster he remembered him as but, once upon a time, Jack hurt that man’s son badly, and right now he doesn’t seem like the forgiving type – at all.

Jack nods at the elder MacGyver and helps himself to coffee, then sits down at the table in his usual spot.

James leans back in his chair and musters Jack with a critical eye. “Think you’re ready to go back in the field?”

“Dad-“ Mac tries to interrupt, but Jack speaks first.

“Yeah. Should be good.”

“You got _shot_ a week ago,” Mac grinds out. There’s concern in his voice, and Jack takes a moment to marvel at the fact that they’ve managed to get close enough during the last few days for the kid to feel any concern at all.

Even if he doesn’t deserve that concern.

“It doesn’t really matter at this point whether you feel up to it or not,” James continues, ignoring his son’s glare. “I’ve got intel that Walsh is ready to leave the UK. If we don’t move on him soon, we risk losing him entirely.”

Jack nods to himself. He’d thought something like that might happen. It’s one thing to give him time to recover, but if you don’t throw your enemy some breadcrumbs now and again they lose interest and focus on other things. Still, Mac doesn’t seem convinced, judging by the frown on his face.

“You really think they’re going to leave while we’re still holed up here? Jack is the last surviving member of the team who…”

The reminder does nothing to endear Jack to the elder MacGyver. Those blue ice are ice cold when he speaks next. “I talked to Director Webber already. Your team is waiting for us. Agent Davis found Griggs for us, and I’m not prepared to let the bastard escape again.”

Mac still doesn’t look happy about it, but he concedes with a nod.

Packing up takes them no more than half an hour, and Jack finds himself in the backseat of a non-descript rental car driven by MacGyver senior, tense silence nipping at their heels the entire way to the meeting point.

“Jack!” Riley calls out as soon as he steps out of the car. She hugs him tightly, and Jack suppresses the wince when some of that pressure aggravates his still healing wounds. A few days ago he doubted that she’d ever want to hug him again, he’s not about to let a gunshot wound or two get in the way of that.

“Guys,” Jack says, turning to the rest of the team. “It’s good to see you.” Russ smiles and nods in greeting. Desi just raises an eyebrow, but Jack can see concern hiding in her eyes. She’s probably going to drag him to medical as soon as they’re back in LA with some not so subtle threats should Jack try to resist.

He can’t wait.

Riley drags them over to their car where her equipment is set up on the hood.

“We have Griggs under surveillance,” she says, throwing a concerned glance in Mac’s direction. Through the video feed, they can see the former CIA agent sitting at a table, doing nothing at all from what Jack can see. The kid goes tense beside him when he looks at the screen, but relaxes after a moment or two.

“Matty sent a TAC team,” Desi adds. “I’m going to take point, Jack will bring up the rear,” she says with a pointed look. Jack wants to tell her no, wants to take point himself, but…

That’s a bad idea.

A really bad idea.

They need Griggs alive to get to Walsh, and Jack isn’t entirely sure he’d survive if Jack were the first operative to lay eyes on him.

In the end, getting Griggs is surprisingly easy. There are no hidden traps, no unexpected hurdles to cross. The bastard meets them with a lazy grin, but Jack can see exhaustion and fear hiding behind the facade.

“Jack Wyatt Dalton. It’s been a while. And you brought little Angus with you,” Griggs says, eyes watching Mac like a predator when he steps into the room. Jack tightens the grip he has on his gun, but Mac looks surprisingly relaxed. Ignoring his father trying to hold him back, he walks up to Griggs, and smiles a smile that clearly unsettles something within their captive, judging by the startled look on his face.

“You know,” Mac begins, “I don’t think I’ll be needing this anymore.” He puts something on the table, something Jack recognizes with sudden clarity.

It’s a piece of glass – glass that had shattered long ago and likely given Mac that scar. He must have kept it in his fist, probably hiding it in his cell after. Jack isn’t sure why he would have gone to all that trouble for it, except, he does know, doesn’t he?

It’s an ending. Mac is ending this on his terms. It doesn’t matter anymore what Griggs does or says – from now on, he’s nothing more than a short footnote in Angus MacGyver’s history, something to be forgotten about.

Mac may not be able to free himself from the memories, but he _can_ free himself from this – from the hold Griggs has on him.

“And that’s supposed to tell me what?” Griggs asks spitefully. Jack can’t tell whether the other man really doesn’t remember the significance of the glass or not, but realises that it doesn’t matter anymore. Mac shrugs and turns round, nodding at his dad in some kind of pre-arranged signal. Griggs struggles in the hold the TAC team leader still has on him.

“Hey – I asked you a fucking question!” He yells, but Mac ignores him and walks away without looking back. It’s James who does what almost every single person in the room has probably been wanting to do since Griggs started talking, and punches him in the face. Desi raises an impressed eyebrow. Jack grins and decides to take a page out of the kid’s book, following him outside. Maybe he’s finally over Griggs too.

…

The elder MacGyver gets Griggs to talk in less than half an hour. Jack isn’t there when it happens. He spends the time outside, watching over Mac like an overgrown mother-hen and feeling only slightly ridiculous while doing it. There’s some invisible weight that seems to have been lifted from the kid’s shoulders. He’s not as tense anymore, breathes easier, smiles at Jack every now and then without being prompted by one of Jack’s many terrible jokes.

Riley tells him later that all it took for Griggs to talk was James showing him several pictures of a non-descript suburban house with a smiling elderly couple in front of it. Seems there are some people the bastard cares about after all.

Jack and the team aren’t involved in hunting down Walsh – neither is Mac. They say goodbye to the elder MacGyver at a private airport where the DXS jet is already waiting for them. Jack expects the kid to leave with his dad, expects a handshake and maybe one more smile before saying goodbye to Angus MacGyver, but he’s more than surprised when James hugs his son and turns around with the clear intent to leave him behind.

“Mac?” Jack asks, confused. James turns around, and this time, there’s a sliver of warmth in his eyes when he looks at Jack.

“Take care of my son, Agent Dalton. I’m going to keep a very close eye on you, and I’ll know if you don’t.” He doesn’t give Jack a chance to respond, just shoulders his bag and strides towards the TAC team waiting for him.

“What?” Jack isn’t sure what just happened. He turns to Mac who’s blushing slightly when he notices Jack’s gaze.

“You don’t need to take him seriously – really.” He shrugs. “It’s just – Director Webber offered me a job, and so we’ll likely be working together?”

Jack needs a moment to process that information, and when he does, something in him he hadn’t noticed going tense in the first place eases. It seems he wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to the kid after all.

Still, he isn’t sure the other man really knows what he’s getting into.

“I’m not a good man, hoss,” Jack says, closing his eyes. No matter what steps he may have taken on the path of redemption – that bit is still true, and no one should know that better than the man standing next to him.

“Jack – look at me,” Mac says and Jack does. There’s no disgust in Mac’s eyes, but no pity either.

There’s only acceptance.

“I’m not a good man,” Jack tries again.

Mac smiles softly and shakes his head. “You’re a kind man, Jack. That’s really all I need to know.”

Mac doesn’t tell him that he’s wrong, that he’s a good man, and Jack is grateful for that because, in the end, absolution is something Jack can only find for himself. Jack is nowhere near that point yet. He’s handed something much more precious instead – Mac’s _trust_. Despite everything, despite the fact that Jack was partly responsible for a trauma that haunts him to this day, Mac trusts him.

Jack doesn’t think he deserves that trust, but he’s finally come far enough to understand that he doesn’t get to make that decision for Mac. He can only accept the gift and hope he’s strong enough to live up to the kid’s expectations.

Jack nods to himself. He still isn’t sure that he deserves this – deserves having Angus MacGyver look at him with trust instead of fear, but if he’s ever going to start making up for what he did to the kid, this is the place to start.

…

_Eventually, they’ll make their way back to LA where they’ll introduce Mac to Matty, and watch as those two manage to form a firm and lasting friendship despite their differences. Desi and Mac will discover a mutual penchant for mayhem and mischief, and be responsible for every single new grey hair Jack gets over the next few years. Mac and Riley will find a common love of all things technological and will spend more than just a few all-nighters in the labs, watched over by Jack and Desi. Russ will continue to grate on Jack’s nerves, but he will also become a friend to Mac – someone the kid can talk to about his trauma without having the shadow of a common experience hanging over them. For that alone, Jack is going to forgive the man all of his other idiosyncrasies._

_Bozer will eventually stop looking at Jack like he wants to bury him in the backyard whenever he’s over at Mac’s house – eventually. It’s a work in progress._

_James will return with Walsh in handcuffs. Matty will offer him the position of Oversight which has essentially remained empty since Thornton’s arrest, and he will take the job, because it’s mostly administrative, and it gives him ample time to spend with his son. There’s a reality out there somewhere where James MacGyver never learned to look at his son and see a fully formed person with dreams and wishes of his own, but that reality is not this one. James still left Angus early on, but he learned how to be a father again during long sleepless nights making hot chocolate for the son who suffered for his father’s sins. He’s actually a decent parent when he has no other choice._

_There’s a ghost named Tiberius Kovacs that will rear his head again, two years after Mac starts working for the DXS. In a different reality, James will welcome the chance to get rid of the man he’s long thought of as nothing more than an unnecessary distraction in his son’s life, but not in this one._

_Jack Dalton may have held the strings in that terrible place where Mac was tortured, but it’s James MacGyver’s mistakes that brought his son to that place to begin with, and James sees the way Angus looks at Jack – sees the way Jack Dalton has helped to find the broken pieces of Angus MacGyver’s soul and put them back together bit by bit._

_Jack will never even find out that Kovacs had still been alive. He’ll spend the evening that James MacGyver takes a team deep into the Cambodian jungle to finally put an end to the bastard’s reign on the deck of Mac’s house, idly nursing his second beer, staring into the flames._

_“Jack?” Mac will asks, sitting close enough, their legs are touching, warmth seeping into Jack’s skin._

_“Hm?”_

_“You think we would have met if I hadn’t become a person of interest all those years ago?”_

_Jack will tense slightly, because no matter how often Mac hugs him, no matter how often those blue, blue eyes light up in delight when spotting Jack, some guilt will always remain._

_“I dunno,” Jack will mumble, uneasy, not quite sure where Mac’s going with this. The kid will fidget with the label of his bottle for a second, before leaning to the side until he can rest his head on Jack’s shoulder._

_“Because I can’t regret it, what happened – not anymore. I want to, sometimes, but…I just can’t regret meeting you, Jack. If I could exchange not being interrogated by Griggs and…and by you for never meeting you in the first place,” Mac will trail off, sounding slightly bewildered. As if he’d just realized it for the first time himself. “I don’t think I would choose the second option.”_

_Something in Jack’s heart will finally ease. He will put an arm around Mac’s shoulder and press a kiss into dishevelled blond strands. They will sit there like that for a long time, just them and the LA skyline, until the sun rises over the city. It will be a beautiful day._


End file.
